


General Knowledge

by stillscape



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 22:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2286327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lauren (JaneEyre) requested Leslie/Ben and said she liked "smart AUs," so here is an AU of Leslie and Ben being smart! Pre-series. Pub trivia.  Thanks to ashisfriendly for the scenario and throwingpens for the beta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	General Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladywaffles (JaneEyre)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneEyre/gifts).



“Sorry, guys,” said the quizmaster. “Those are the rules. No more than six per team.” 

Seven Indiana state budget auditors exchanged glances. After a prolonged and uncomfortable silence, Ben gave up. 

“I’ll sit this one out, guys,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. 

His partner frowned--well, he wasn’t really capable of a real frown, but he approximated it well enough. “Ben, are you sure? You’ve been looking forward to trivia night all week.” 

“Yeah, it’s no big deal.” 

“One of us will sit out the next round, buddy.” Chris gave him one of those combination back clap-hugs he was so fond of, and the others nodded in affirmation. “You are, of course, welcome to sit with us.” 

“Well, I--” 

Across the bar, Ben spotted a tall brunette talking casually with her girlfriends. He couldn’t see her entire face from here, but his interest was piqued nevertheless. And, he figured, as long as he wasn’t included in trivia, he might as well roll the dice. 

“I’m gonna grab a drink first,” he said. 

“Well, the waitress will be over in just a moment.” 

“Nah, I’ll just walk up to the bar.” He set off before he could change his mind about rolling the dice, and tried not to think about how long it had been since he had rolled the dice successfully, or even--for that matter--taken the dice out of his pocket. He didn't need to hook up with anyone tonight. At this point, he’d settle for a pleasant conversation that wasn’t about budgets. 

He definitely needed a drink first.

The bar’s floor was sticky underfoot, the lighting slightly too dim, and the drinks slightly too expensive. And it was slightly warmer than Ben preferred. That was what you got near the capitol building, though. 

“Excuse me,” said a woman’s voice, as she grabbed his arm.

Ben turned his head and found a small, pale hand with neatly rounded fingernails nestled into the crook of his elbow. Above the elbow was a small, pale wrist, and then a bare forearm, which he followed further up to a blue short-sleeved blouse, light blonde curls over soft round shoulders, and--eventually--a friendly smile and two blue eyes. 

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to sound like I was eavesdropping, but I overheard you and your friends,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the auditors’ table. 

“Really?” 

“What do you mean, ‘really’?” 

“It’s loud in here.” 

The woman gave her head a little shake. “I have good hearing. Anyway--”

At that point, she must have noticed that Ben was staring at her hand still on his elbow; she quickly drew it away, pushing her hair behind her ear. 

“Anyway, I’m here by myself, and I thought I’d do trivia, but you need two people for a team.” 

“You’re here by yourself?” He looked around, not sure what he was expecting to see. She did not strike him, somehow, as the kind of woman who went to bars and frequented trivia nights alone. 

“Yeah. I’m on a work trip by myself, and I got bored in the hotel room, so I came here for trivia night. But you need two people for a team. So we could be teammates, if you want.” 

Across the bar, he could see the brunette. She was still talking with her girlfriends, and he still couldn’t see all of her face. No one had approached them. 

“I’m really good,” said the blonde woman. 

Ben, who preferred to believe that he always thought with his brain instead of his penis, made the well-reasoned executive decision that the little blonde woman in front of him was really, really cute. 

“Okay,” he said, nodding, and found himself rewarded with a big smile. 

“I’m Leslie, by the way. Leslie Knope.” 

“Ben Wyatt.”

They shook hands. 

“I’ll buy your first drink, Ben Wyatt,” said Leslie Knope. She headed for a small table nearby, and he followed. “What’s your poison?” 

“Gin and tonic.” 

“Be right back. Hey, think of a team name while I’m gone.”

____________________ 

The quizmaster cleared his throat loudly and obnoxiously into the microphone. Ben, sipping his gin and tonic, watched Leslie cringe at the reverberation.

She held the pencil. She had insisted on holding the pencil, saying she didn’t think she could trust him after he’d chosen _House Targaryen_ as their team name. Ben thought she had been teasing, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

“Question one. Who was the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court?” 

“Thurgood Marshall,” muttered Ben at once, but Leslie had already started writing it down. 

“That one’s easy,” she said.

____________________ 

“Question two. What is the capital city of Victoria, Australia?”

This time Leslie hesitated for just a moment. 

“Melbourne,” said Ben, just as she said “It’s Melbourne, right?” 

She wrote it down. 

“Off to a good start,” she said. “Two down, eight to go.”

____________________ 

“Question three. In scuba diving, what does the acronym ‘scuba’ stand for?”

Leslie beamed and began scribbling. 

“Are you certified?” she asked, as she printed _self contained underwater breathing apparatus_ on their sheet. 

“No.”

“Really? You should get certified. Scuba diving’s awesome, unless you get the bends.” 

Ben heard Thom Yorke’s voice in the back of his mind. “What are the bends like?” 

“I’ve never had them myself,” she said. “I went scuba diving with a boyfriend once, though, and he got them. He shot up really fast, and he got the bends.” 

“What happened?” 

“I don’t know, actually. They took him straight into the decompression chamber. I was waiting around in our hotel after, but then he called as soon as he got out and broke up with me, so…” She shrugged. 

“Wait, he did what?”

“It was okay in the end. I don’t think I was really in love with him.”

____________________ 

“Question four. Who is the Indiana Pacers’ all-time leading scorer?”

Leslie scowled. “Well, everyone’s going to get that,” she complained, as she wrote down _Reggie Miller_.

____________________ 

“Question five. What fictional deity is described as ‘a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind’?”

Ben was a little pleased to see his partner was entirely baffled by this question. 

“Cthulhu,” he said. 

“Excuse me?” 

“Cthulhu. It’s from Lovecraft.”

“I don’t know what any of that is.” 

“It’s classic horror fiction.” 

“Well, you write it down,” she said, passing him the pencil. “I hope you know how to spell it.” 

As he accepted the pencil, their fingers brushed. 

“So what do you read?” 

“For pleasure? Mostly political biographies. Well, and Harry Potter.” 

“That’s a good mix,” said Ben (who meant it), and was pleased to see her smile.

____________________ 

“Question six. What is the atomic number for gold?”

“Well, the chemical symbol is Au,” he said. 

“Yeah, but what’s the atomic number?” 

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” she said. 

Ben cast a glance across the bar. When it landed on the auditors’ table, he realized he had mostly forgotten they were even there. 

“We’ll have to guess.” 

Leslie’s brow furrowed. “Sixteen?”

“Forty-two?” 

“Why forty-two?”

“I don’t know. Why sixteen?” 

In the end, she wrote down thirty-three, which seemed like a compromise.

____________________ 

“Question seven. In 1993, what Minnesota town elected an eighteen-year-old mayor?”

All the noise in the bar simultaneously faded away and became exponentially louder. The temperature dropped, but Ben started sweating. Of all the possible random questions that a pub trivia quizmaster could have come up with, he had never imagined _this_ one. Never.

“Partridge,” Leslie said confidently. She wrote it down. Then she froze. 

Ben noticed all this as though from a great distance away. 

“You’re _Benji Wyatt_.” Her voice was slow and incredulous and Ben was still very, very far away, even though Leslie was closer than arm’s length. “Ben? You are, right?” 

He nodded. “Yeah.” 

“Oh, my god. I never thought I’d meet you.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“I was so jealous of you.”

Ben crashed back to earth, and his uncomfortable bar stool. “ _Jealous_?”

“Well, yeah. Do you know how much I wanted to be mayor when I was a kid? Or president, but you have to be thirty-five to be president, so mayor first.” 

“You shouldn’t have been,” he said. "Jealous, I mean." 

“Why not?” 

“Well…” 

“You were really cute, by the way.” 

“I ran the town into the ground in a couple of months and got impeached.” The words came out much more slowly than he’d meant them to. 

“Thirty seconds,” said the quizmaster. 

“It kind of ruined my life.” 

Leslie studied his face for the entire thirty seconds. It was less uncomfortable than it should have been, especially considering he had the impression that there were approximately one million questions she wanted to ask him. 

“Question eight.” 

Ben didn’t exactly hear the question, but Leslie seemed to know the answer, so he took a large gulp of his gin and tonic while she scribbled.

____________________ 

“Question nine. Who played the role of Jack in the 1995 film _While You Were Sleeping_?”

“Crap. Is it Bill Paxton or Bill Pullman?” 

“I don’t know. I never saw that movie.” 

“Really?” Leslie asked. “You should. It’s pretty romantic. See, this woman is in love with a guy, but--”

“Don’t spoil the plot. In case I ever see it.” 

“I think it’s Bill Pullman.” 

“Well, let’s go with that then.”

____________________ 

“Question ten. Last question, everybody. Here we go. Who was the fourteenth and final president of the Socialist Republic of Serbia?”

“Slobodan Milosevic,” they said in unison. 

“I’m impressed that you know that,” Leslie said. 

“Oh, well,” Ben said, trying to sound offhand about it, “it’s just kind of burned into my brain, you know? From doing Model UN in high school.”

“You did Model UN?” She sounded delighted. 

“I super did.” 

“Me too! I was really good.” 

“I bet you were.” 

“Oh, I was,” she said. “I would have kicked your ass, I bet.” 

“I don’t think so.” 

“Is that a bet you’re willing to take?” 

He wondered if she was suggesting they crash a Model UN conference sometime to hash it out. He certainly couldn’t think of any other way they would be able to settle such a bet.

____________________ 

“Nine correct,” Leslie said. “Who the hell knew the atomic number of gold was 79?”

Ben shrugged. 

When the quizmaster had sorted through all the answer sheets, verifying the results, he announced that two teams were tied for the win, with nine points apiece: House Targaryen and the Excelerators. 

Across the bar, Chris stood up and gave Ben a double thumbs-up. “Way to go, buddy!” he called. “This is literally the best possible outcome, for the purposes of office morale.”

____________________ 

“Tiebreaker. Are you ready, folks? This is a tough one.”

“I’m ready,” muttered Leslie. A little ripple went through the muscle of her jaw. 

Ben found his hand on Leslie’s shoulder and had no idea how it had gotten there, or why it was rubbing her in a way he hoped was reassuring, or why he didn’t want to move his thumb from her bare skin. 

“It’s just pub trivia.” 

“I’m competitive,” she said. “Besides, don’t you want to beat your coworkers? They abandoned you.” 

_Yeah, but that meant I got to be on your team_ , Ben thought. He wondered if she’d even noticed he was touching her. 

The quizmaster cleared his throat into the microphone again. “The team that guesses the closest to the actual number wins. Ready? Okay. What is the acreage of Yellowstone National Park?” 

Ben cast a glance at the auditors’ table. Unsurprisingly, they all looked bewildered, even Chris. He felt equally baffled himself. 

But Leslie was already scribbling something. 

“Wait, you _know_ this?” 

“Of course. I work in parks. Didn’t I tell you that?” 

“No.”

“At the municipal level. In Pawnee. I’m the deputy director of the Parks and Recreation department.” 

“That’s not a logical segue into knowing the acreage of Yellowstone.” 

“I like to know everything about as many parks as possible,” she said. “Just in case. You know. Knowledge is power, Ben.” 

The quizmaster called time. “What have you got, Excelerators?” 

“We have decided to go with the number five hundred thousand, four hundred and sixty-one,” said Chris. 

Leslie scoffed. “That’s so far off it’s not even funny,” she yelled across the bar. “You’re going down, Excelerators.” 

“House Targaryen?” 

“Precisely two million, two hundred and nineteen thousand, seven hundred and ninety-one,” announced Leslie.

____________________ 

“Do you want another drink?” Ben asked, eyeing their mostly empty glasses.

“Maybe. Actually, I’m kind of hungry.” 

“I can see what they have on the bar menu.” This bar wasn’t known for its food, and he’d never eaten here, but surely they at least had French fries or something. 

Leslie scrunched her nose. “Thanks, but I don’t think I’m in the mood for bar food.” 

“No?”

“Waffles,” she said, decisively. 

“I’m pretty sure the bar doesn’t serve waffles.” 

“Know anywhere around here that does?” 

He had to think about it for a moment. “Open at this time of night? Um...there’s a 24-hour diner about three blocks away. I don’t know about the waffles, but their pancakes are pretty good.” 

“That’ll do just fine.” She stood up, grabbed her purse, and collected a slightly crumpled blazer from the back of her chair. 

But she didn’t start to leave. She seemed to be waiting for something. For him, maybe. He hoped she was waiting for him. 

“Uh, so can I walk you there?” 

“Absolutely,” she said. Ben wouldn’t have sworn to it, since it wasn’t scientifically possible, but he was pretty sure she had just made the dimly lit bar a little bit brighter. 

Ben stood up too, and Leslie immediately slipped her arm through his. 

“Actually,” she said, as they wove their way towards the door, “I was kind of hoping you’d join me.” 

“Yeah?” 

“You like breakfast food, right?” 

“Sure.”

“Because I’m done dating guys who don’t like breakfast food.” 

Ben liked breakfast food.

____________________ 

Ben Wyatt liked breakfast food a lot better a couple of hours later, when he discovered that Leslie Knope’s lips tasted of bacon and maple syrup, and decided he was a convert to the salty-sweet combination that everyone was always raving about.

____________________ 


End file.
